By Maren Madalyn, contributing writer
“Even if we just help one caregiver, we have done our job.”
Phyllis Black, Family & Community Engagement Specialist
United Children & Family Head Start
This simple, but powerful statement perfectly captures the passion and purpose of Phyllis Black’s work with the United Children and Family Head Start (UCFHS) in Detroit, Michigan.
As a Family and Community Engagement Specialist—not to mention a veteran educator of nearly 25 years—Black understands the importance of early and successful family engagement. The more caregivers are active drivers of student learning, the better prepared little learners become for their futures in formal school settings and beyond.
Each year, UCFHS serves 287 Detroit families and their young children up to age 5 (Head Start: 231, Early Head Start: 40, and Pregnant Women: 16). Like many Head Start agencies, the team provides more than just learning and development support for young children. Families may turn to the agency for access to community resources to address basic needs, such as food or housing security. UCFHS also serves as a critical teacher for caregivers themselves, walking them through effective parenting strategies, child development milestones, and much more.
And, similar to their fellow agencies, UCFHS faced a daunting task when programs across the country shut their doors in spring 2020. Their top priority was to find a way to keep their services going with caregivers despite these massive interruptions.
Fortunately, as the UCFHS team pivoted to adapt, they found an ally to maintain connections with their families: ParentPowered. Not only did UCFHS families gain access to trauma-informed, evidence-based learning activities tailored to children’s developmental stage—the agency’s staff also gained invaluable data and analytics to help guide their continuous improvement efforts.
Meeting families’ needs without activating trauma
The trauma-informed nature of its program is what first attracted Black to ParentPowered. A number of parents served by UCFHS have themselves experienced trauma, either as adults or through adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Research has shown that even experiencing just one ACE can impact a child’s future well-being as an adult.
The agency could see the ways that trauma was affecting the next generation, as they navigated low academic outcomes among their program’s children and even low attendance rates with some students. So when Black learned that ParentPowered had designed a program specifically to support caregivers impacted by trauma, she knew she had struck gold.
“ParentPowered was an excellent opportunity for UCFHS to make sure that we could keep the services going for our parents without interruption,” she explained in a recent interview. She pointed to the ability to provide resources aligned with the protective factors framework—designed to minimize reactivating trauma among families—as essential at a time when many families were being retraumatized.
Further, access to these resources was equitable because families received them via text messaging, avoiding the need for a mobile app or even internet connectivity. “We do know that text messaging works,” Black commented. “We are in a texting generation. Without text messaging, parents aren’t always going to get that information.”
After launching ParentPowered Trauma-Informed in 2021, the UCFHS team today continues to witness powerful gains with family and community engagement. While some improvements occurred organically, others were the result of intentional steps taken by UCFHS to expand the program—all informed by data.
Power in numbers: How data informs UCFHS family supports
Data is the key to UCFHS’s strategy to ensure every family and child can thrive. The agency leverages a variety of tools and datasets to guide their program evaluations (including self assessments), identify ways to deepen engagement with families, and add new services to meet emergent needs.
Among the many solutions used by UCFHS are:
- Parent Gauge, created by the National Head Start Association, to conduct their family needs assessments each year
- Survey Monkey to gather community partner feedback and insights
- ChildPlus to review family and child demographic data as well as monitor enrollments
And of course, the team uses ParentPowered, too.
The value of ParentPowered’s analytics and dashboards
Every ParentPowered partner receives access to the Dashboards, which contain everything educators need to enroll families in the program as well as track caregivers’ engagement and participation.
While these capabilities are valuable, Black and her team are particularly fond of the Family Engagement Survey data, Monthly Family Engagement reports, and End-of-Year Impact reports.
“[Through ParentPowered surveys] we get feedback on what parents are saying about the program,” Black explained, highlighting the importance of ongoing inputs from parents to sculpt the agency’s programming. One of the most consistent patterns she’s witnessed in parent feedback is the benefit of ParentPowered texts in showing families how to help their kids: “[ParentPowered] helps them work with kids at home and educates themselves about what they can do with their kids throughout the program year.”
The Monthly Family Engagement reports and End-of-Year Impact reports both tie directly into the agency’s planning model and help inform their big-picture strategy to ensure each child and their family has the opportunity to succeed.
“I also like sharing the monthly data reports provided by ParentPowered [with staff] as well as the Impact Reports. . . [these reports] help with funding, in-kind, community partnership, parent/child relationships, survey information and family resource information.”
Phyllis Black, Family & Community Engagement Specialist (UCFHS)
UCFHS staff pull insights from all these tools in order to guide decisions. Black pointed to the complementary nature of both ParentPowered and Parent Gauge in painting a full picture of family engagement within the agency:
“We are able to assess our families’ needs through the Parent Gauge process. . . then we compare all the data from ParentPowered and Parent Gauge to ensure we are servicing our parents [and identify] what we need to include in services going forward based on family responses.”
What UCFHS and their parents love most about ParentPowered
When asked what she loves most about ParentPowered, Black mentioned how difficult it is to choose between the family engagement program itself or the supportive team partnering with UCFHS. But if she had to choose?
“Definitely the ParentPowered team itself,” Black confirmed with a smile.
Her staff also greatly appreciate the partnership, though for different reasons. “I included staff in the text messages,” Black explained, “so they receive the messages alongside families. When families come back and are excited about what activities they did with their kids, the teaching staff know exactly what they’re talking about.”
She pointed out that ParentPowered benefits her Family Support Workers and other team members by taking the burden of developing learning materials for families off of their shoulders. Better still, parent feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about ParentPowered text messages:
“Parents don’t need to buy anything. . . they can often find materials at home. Many [ParentPowered activities] aren’t even using concrete things, meaning families can practice things like the ABCs anywhere.”
Black commented that she was pleasantly surprised to see parents recognize just how independent their young children really are. The result is a larger number of parents engaging in more team-like approaches to learning support, and less often doing activities or tasks for their children.
Building community connects for deeper family support
Additionally, UCFHS finds that the Community Support Stream (CSS) messages are consistently among the most accessed and popular messages with families, confirmed by both survey data and individual parent conversations.
CSS messages are curated to send information about local community resources to families. They are critical to UCFHS’ strategy to help families get their most basic needs met. The team depends on their community partners and often leans on family feedback to identify which new partnerships or community services to highlight.
In particular, UCFHS is building their connections with local shelters to support families struggling with stable housing to ensure their children still benefit from ParentPowered’s learning resources.
Another common need among UCFHS families are mental health services. Black is not surprised by this trend, given the lingering effects of the pandemic. She is also happy to see their families engaging with the CSS messages related to mental health supports as a starting point. This is a key area the UCFHS team hopes to expand during the upcoming program year.
25 years of service: Celebrating success and carving a path forward
As of this article’s publishing, Black plans to retire at the end of August 2024, after a long and dedicated career to children and their families. Looking back on her many years in education, she is humbled by the positive impacts she has witnessed.
But what has brought her the greatest joy and pride are seeing her staff grow through times of change, embracing new programs and ideas to deepen their work despite discomfort, and watching how the agency’s family and community relationships have blossomed.
“It’s huge when you can see families where they are at one point, then at a totally different point in their interactions and relationships with their families [during the year],” reflected Black. “I’m really proud. . . of the many opportunities [for families] through UCFHS.”
She shares this advice to fellow educators serving families of young children:
“I encourage [early childhood educators] to partner with ParentPowered to assist their families they are servicing!”
Phyllis Black, Family & Community Engagement Specialist (UCFHS)
In addition to her praise for the ParentPowered team’s support, she highlights the value of the content resources provided in the Dashboards. She encourages agency staff to share supports like the Communications Guide Bundle with families to help nurture parent-child relationships at home.
Finally, she points to the impact of sharing ParentPowered’s family feedback survey data back with staff as well as families themselves. By showing caregivers how their voices are heard and the ways they influence program improvements, educators deepen family trust in the agency (and keep them engaged in the ParentPowered program).
In summary, Black shared, “I am glad to have had the opportunity to work with ParentPowered. The team has been excellent since day one. . . and very supportive throughout the whole process, every step of the way. . . I am very grateful to the team for our relationships over the last three years.”
To learn more about ParentPowered Trauma Informed, join an upcoming info session or take a self-paced tour.
About the author
Maren Madalyn has worked at the intersection of K12 education and technology for over a decade, serving in roles ranging from counseling to customer success to product management. She blends this expertise with fluid writing and strategic problem-solving to help education organizations create thoughtful long-form content that empowers educators.
